Tuesday, 31 March 2015

Who Reviews Mawdryn Undead by Jeffrey Zyra

Mawdryn Undead

Written By Peter Grimwade

Reviewed by Jeffrey Zyra

“I, Mawdryn, have
returned. It is time for the awakening.”

The TARDIS
is caught in a warp ellipse and materializes on a starliner that appears to be
empty. What they find out that it isn’t
as Turlough transmats to the starliner on orders of The Black Guardian to kill
The Doctor. The Doctor and Turlough
take the transmat back to Earth to shut the transmat signal off so the TARDIS
will be free to leave. What happens is
that when the transmat signal is shut off the TARDIS arrives in 1977 and not
1983 where The Doctor and Turlough are.

When Tegan
and Nyssa arrive in 1977 they find a charred being in the capsule that they
believe is The Doctor. So Tegan decides
to head for BrendonSchool to get some
help. She runs into an old friend of The
Doctor as The Brigadier now teaches math at the school. The pair head back to the TARDIS where Nyssa
is anxious to leave but when they enter the TARDIS the person they see looks
nothing like The Doctor at all.

Back in
1983 The Doctor runs into The Brigadier also but for some reason he does not
remember who he is. For some reason he has no recollection of the last six
years. Once The Doctor helps The
Brigadier regain his memory they work on trying to get back to the Starliner by
the transmat capsule. With the aid of the homing beacon The Brigadier had from
six years ago The Doctor, Turlough and Brigadier make it back to the Staliner
but there is a problem. Unfortunately
the 1977 Brigadier arrived on the Starliner with Mawdryn , Nyssa and Tegan and
if they meet it would be really bad or as Tegan says “ZAP!”

Season 20
was a season that John Nathan Turner wanted to have things from the past return
to Doctor Who to help with the celebration.
In Mawdryn Undead we have two figures from The Doctors past
returning. First we have The Black
Guardian. The Doctor first encountered
The Black Guardian while he was searching for the Key to Time.

While it
was in The Armageddon Factor that he tricked The Black Guardian (Who was
disguised at The White Guardian) from getting the Key to Time it was this act
that The Black Guardian swore revenge on The Doctor and threaten to kill him.
What I find to be pretty comical is that The Black Guardian is wearing a bird on
its head. If he is supposed to be all
powerful and so evil I would have thought he could come up with a better head
piece than a dead crow on his head.

This takes
us to now. The year is 1983 and The
Black Guardian is using a student at BrendonSchool named
Turlough. He is actually an alien from
the planet of Trion whose family has been exiled. The Black Guardian promises to take him away
from earth if he does one thing for him.
Kill The Doctor.

At Brendon
school teaching math is the other returning character from The Doctor’s past.
It is none other than Brigadier Lethbridge – Stewart who is a dear old friend
of The Doctor’s and doesn’t seem to remember quite who he is. Definitely a dilemma for The Doctor as he has
also lost his TARDIS with Nyssa and Tegan back in 1977 with a younger
Brigadier. Plus there is the threat of
Mawdryn pretending to be an injured Doctor and who wants the Doctors remaining
lives to help his fellow comrades to die.

What is
weird during this sequence is how stupid and gullible Nyssa is. Mawdryn fools her so easily and for someone
who is so smart and has a scientific mind you would have thought she would see
through Mawdryn. Tegan is the one who
actually sees through it all and has her doubts but keeps getting shot down by
Nyssa who is so taken in and naïve that you have to believe that Tegan is the
smarter of the two at least in this story. Tegan knows The Doctor and knows how
he really regenerates and is not taken in by Mawdryn at all.

I love
Nicholas Courtney in this episode. He
his marvelous playing the two Brigadiers and the one that is from 1983 who has
the memory problems is one of his best performances. I just love the scene when The Doctor
confronts him and helps get his memories back.
It is such a powerful scene and you see The Brigadier in a weaken state
that it brings some humility to the harden soldier.

Mawdryn
Undead is a pretty good story with some interesting things going on it. You have the two Brigadiers on the star liner
trying to not meet and cause damage to the time lines and you have Turlough
attempting to kill The Doctor to no avail for The Black Guardian. This trilogy gets overlooked quite a bit but
these three stories are some of the Fifth Doctors better adventures and it
starts off with a nostalgic trip down memory lane for The Doctor as he is
reunited with The Brigadier for the first time since Terror of the Zygons way
back in series 13.